56 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



Human progress in general, the passage of 

 mankind from a lower to a higher level, consists, 

 as I earnestly believe, and as I have tried to shew 

 elsewhere, in the gradual embodiment in society 

 of certain impulses and tendencies arising in the 

 obscure regions of sub-conscious life, and gradu- 

 ally making their way into all the forms of human 

 activity, thought, feeling, action, art, institutions 

 and social organization. These creative and life- 

 giving impulses I should prefer to call divine 

 ideas; but if anyone regards this phrase as too 

 theological and question-begging, I will not at 

 this moment insist upon it. We need not stay to 

 examine the origin of these ideas ; we have enough 

 to do in tracing their manifestation in the field of 

 consciousness. However they originate, they 

 come bubbling up from unknown depths like the 

 springs of rivers among the hills, and pass on to 

 make the fields of life fertile. To each genera- 

 tion and to every nation it is given, or at least 

 the opportunity is given, to manifest some par- 

 ticular ideas in higher or completer form. The 

 Jews owe their place in the history of the world to 

 their enthusiasm for the idea of the divine guid- 

 ance and government of mankind, the Romans 

 to their sense of civic law and order. The 

 Greeks, more susceptible to ideas than any race 

 that ever lived, have left us imperishable embodi- 

 ments of the ideas of rationality, of human beauty, 

 of measure and method in all things. The best 

 achievement of the Teutonic races was their 



